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Brands spend big money on lavish Super Bowl commercials in hopes of producing an ad that will stimulate water-cooler conversation, this article notes. This year, some companies taking out Super Bowl ads are turning to social media in advance of the big event to defray some of their advertising costs, by offering teasers, previews and even full viewings of their Super Bowl commercials to get fans talking about the ads early via social networks. “For me, it’s all about maximizing exposure,” said Steve Cannon, president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA.

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A 30-second Super Bowl ad costs about $3.8 million -- and that's money that could have been spent buying an awful lot of online buzz, writes Andrew Hanelly. For that sum, Hanelly calculates that brands could reach at least 350 million people with Promoted Tweets, buy about 1.5 million ad clicks using Google Adwords or run ads reaching about 48% of Facebook's entire user-base.

Companies such as Citysearch are using Facebook ads to effectively recruit new workers, Erick Schonfeld writes. For example, the company places an ad with a hiring manager's photo, then displays these ads to the manager's friends on Facebook. When an ad is "liked," it is "thus shared across the social network via the news feed, the ads become implicit referrals," Schonfeld writes.

A study on the TV-viewing habits of consumers has received support from several companies, including Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, Microsoft, CBS, Publicis' Starcom MediaVest Group and Omnicom's OMD. The "Beyond :30" project has been ongoing since 2005 and includes the observation of a panel of 3,000 test viewers who watch and react to new kinds of commercials.

A study on the TV-viewing habits of consumers has received support from several companies, including Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, Microsoft, CBS, Publicis' Starcom MediaVest Group and Omnicom's OMD. The "Beyond :30" project has been ongoing since 2005 and includes the observation of a panel of 3,000 test viewers who watch and react to new kinds of commercials.